Confused Eagles rip new helmet rule after loss to Patriots

For the Eagles, Thursday night’s preseason loss to the Patriots didn't do anything to clarify the league’s new rule regarding lowering the helmet.

Three Eagles defenders were flagged for personal fouls for lowering their helmets to initiate contact despite the offensive players doing the same. In two cases, the ballcarrier did it first, leaving the tacklers with essentially no target.

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The NFL competition committee insisted at the league meetings in March that the rule would apply to offensive as well as defensive players, but through two preseason games, ballcarriers have been immune to infractions. This has left the Eagles more confused now than they were after league officials couldn’t agree during a meeting with the team last month about whether certain hits in the 2017 season would be legal by 2018 standards.

The most egregious example Thursday night occurred during the third quarter when rookie safety Jeremy Reaves was penalized after reacting to New England running back Mike Gillislee’s lowering his head like a battering ram as Reaves approached, head still up.

The players displayed a predictable degree of frustration but a surprising lack of outrage when quizzed afterward.

“It is my understanding that it was more so for leading with the crown of your head and more helmet-to-helmet,” Rodney McLeod said of a first-quarter penalty called on him. “It felt like on that play I didn’t do either. I went low and led with my shoulder and he [James White] saw me coming and he obviously tried to get lower himself.

“They made the call and I asked the referee why he called it. He said any type of movement where you do lower your head during the preseason they are going to call it. I am hoping when the first game comes about that a routine tackle like that doesn’t get called.

“As players we just have to adjust with the rules and I am hoping that these calls that were called tonight are not going to be called on a consistent basis. I felt like a lot of those were not fouls.”

“If [the ballcarriers] are lowering their targets, it was explained to us that they would be penalized just as much, and I don’t know if I’ve seen that thus far in the preseason games, but like I said, I’m hoping that this is just them putting a real point of emphasis on it, trying to get guys to understand that leading with the crown of your head and things like that isn’t appropriate for yourself or for the offender.”

Teammate Nigel Bradham, who also was flagged for that foul on Thursday night, agreed that a double standard is in effect. Yet he didn’t seem surprised.

“It’s an offensive league,” he said. “All the rules are made for them.

“It’s definitely slowing the game down. I feel like it’s extending drives. We could have been off the field a couple times tonight, and those plays were the reason why we weren’t.”

When reminded the league said the same rules would apply to ballcarriers, Bradham joked, “That’s what they said.”

But this issue is no joke. It is changing the essence of the game, perhaps for the worst.

“Our interpretation of the rule was that when you’re striking somebody with your helmet, especially your forehead and the crown of your helmet, that’s kind of what they're looking for,” safety Malcolm Jenkins told NBC Sports Philadelphia. “Things like linear posture and leading with your helmet. But a lot of what we saw today was just routine tackles, and I think it’s really hard, just literally the body posture which the rule explains — it's not possible. It's not possible to tackle somebody around their knees or when the ballcarrier’s down to somehow get lower and still have your face up or your head up.

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“And a lot of times, even if you’re leading with your shoulder like Nigel Bradham's, if your head is down, they’re throwing the flag anyway. It’s different than rules in the past where you could not launch. You could change your target. This is something that I think is completely unavoidable. It’s unnatural to try to play like that. Hopefully, this is just a preseason thing and they work out how they’re going to call it by the time we get to Week 1, because otherwise, the entire game has changed.”